Sovereignty
The sovereignty test
A short set of questions that separates genuine digital sovereignty from an EU region with a sovereignty label, applied honestly to ourselves as well.
New to the topic? Start with What sovereign compliance actually means.
The word “sovereign” is being applied to European technology faster than anyone can check what it means, and some of that enthusiasm is ours to be wary of too. When a term becomes a selling point, it tends to loosen until it describes almost anything, and a buyer who needs the real property can no longer find it in the noise. The way to keep the word honest is to attach a test to it.
Where the marketing and the reality part company
A large share of “sovereign” offerings are, on inspection, a US-controlled product with a European region switched on. The data sits in Frankfurt, which is worth something, while the company holding it answers to a US court, the model interpreting it was built and run under US jurisdiction, and the control plane lives in another legal system. That is data residency wearing a sovereignty badge, and the gap between the two is precisely where a buyer’s risk hides. The gap is not hypothetical: in June 2025, Microsoft’s French legal counsel told the Senate, under oath, that he could not guarantee French data would never be handed to the US government.
- Definition
- The four questions
- Ask any provider, including us: which legal entity holds your data; whose law governs that entity; which court can compel it to hand data over or change how its systems behave; and where the models that process your data actually run. Genuine sovereignty produces plain answers. Residency-with-a-label reaches for the brochure.
Holding the line, including on ourselves
We would rather lose a deal than stretch this word past what our architecture supports, and not only out of principle. The category we are trying to build only means something if the people using it hold the line, and that has to include holding it against our own marketing. A claim we cannot defend under the four questions is a claim we should not make, however much easier it would make a sales conversation.
The value of a definition is that it lets a buyer distinguish substance from decoration without taking anyone’s word for it. Sovereignty is not conferred by choosing a region in a console. It is a fact about who holds the keys, whose courts can reach them, and where the thinking happens, and it is worth insisting on the difference every time the word appears.